Review: Volgarr the Viking

The bygone era of the incredibly difficult platformers, with their inexact control schemes and off-screen spawning, seems to be making a comeback. With lessons learned from past mistakes, games like Spelunky and Super Meat Boy are making it a joy to die over and over again. Adult Swim Games tries to add to the growing collection of difficult, yet fun, platformers with Volgarr the Viking. Regrettably, someone forgot about the past.

Volgarr the Viking opens strong with a great 16-bit era title screen with music that brings memories of Conan the Barbarian, of all things, to my mind. A quick tutorial of how to use the spear not only as a weapon, but as a platform to reach higher places that your double jump cannot is placed at the start. Since the title screen is also the start of the game, no loading is pretty nice. If you want to skip the tutorial and jump right into the fray, going left at the title screen will do just that.

The hand-drawn pixel art does a great job at making Volgarr the Viking have that old school look while playing. Bold color palettes really stand out and makes things easily discernible when moving around. I love the skin-melting-away-until-you-briefly-see-the-bones death animations of Volgarr, which you will see a lot in your time spent in the game.

What Crazy Viking Studios forgot when creating this ode to brutal platform games of yesteryear was precision control over the character. One of the reasons why some of the old school platformers were extremely difficult was the horrendous control you were given of the character. Being able to have complete, almost instant control either on the ground or in the air is crucial to this style of game, which you don’t see here.

Spear ladders help me kill things!

Once you jump in Volgarr the Viking, you’re committed. The only other option you have is to use double jump to jump backwards but by then it’s too late. Having no air control over Volgarr feels like a big restriction that hampers the sense of control so desperately needed for platformers. Instead, it feels like an endless runner game without the screen scrolling automatically. Dying a lot to learn the patterns of the level, as well as the limitations on control can get irritating real quick. Since it is also one-hit kills, the margin for error becomes that much smaller.

There are power-ups that can be collected from treasure chests that add armor pieces to Volgarr. A wooden shield, an iron shield, a horned helmet and a fire sword that increases your melee attack. When fully loaded with all the power-ups, Volgarr can take more hits. Once hit, a piece of armor will fall off leaving Volgarr that much more vulnerable. What I found odd was how the fire sword and helmet were tied together. Getting hit will make both items disappear.

Animation lag is sadly present in Volgarr the Viking. Not so much in the melee attacks but you can really see it using the spear, landing after a jump with or without the downward attack and the dodge roll. The lag is just enough to throw off your timing when trying to jump up a ledge to kill a monster.

A witty comment about Thor, god of thunder, would probably be appropriate here

The checkpoints are not too bad since the levels are broken up into sections, though losing all those power-ups as well as redoing a tough section over and over again can put a hamper on any fun you had up to that point due to imprecise controls. If you decide to try again later after beating a level boss, you can forget about it. With no saved progression, you’ll have to start from the very beginning of the level again. If you read the manual that is on the Steam store page for Volgarr the Viking, however, you’ll see that you can in fact skip levels that you completed by simply going left at the blue crystals. Having this buried in a manual that you have to download and read outside the game is counter-intuitive.

Crazy Viking Studios describes Volgarr the Viking as a “return to the Golden Age of arcades” and possessing “all the hallmarks of the true classics”. Nothing wrong with bringing the classics back. Bringing all the bad with the good from those classic games, however, is an example of not learning from past mistakes.

Review copy suppliedTested on PC

Score: 4/10 Meh

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Did you read the kickstarter? it’s supposed to be difficult. The things that made old school platformers so difficult was just the things you’re bitching about. if you want to play an easy platformer game this one is not for you….. go play super meat boy…..

Sean

Surprised you don’t understand that switching direction mid jump isn’t a natural thing. It’s also more “ninja” than Viking.

There is also no lag in animation. How could there be? It’s not like some AAA 3D high-end shooter. It’s clearly intentional based on physics. Again, you missed the boat.

While you have a few valid points (the firesword and the crystals), you clearly need to understand the genre a bit better before writing your uneducated reviews.

I give your review 2/5 stars. REAL reviewers learn the material and genres in order to be considered viable reviewers. You’ve got a way to go yet, junior.

RealWriter

Honestly, I feel like your a blind guy trying to critique a drawing. You have absolutely no idea what your doing.

Chee

Really buddy? Maybe you better go back to candy crush.

Gamephreak5

From the sounds of it, Crazy Viking Games didn’t forget the past at all. That’s the whole point of this game, and it flew right over the reviewer’s head.

Committed jumps that force you to think before making the leap? Classic Castlevania. One hit kills you, while attaining layers of armor gives you more hits? Classic Ghost n’ Goblins. This game is obviously a mixture of both of these top classic Arcade/NES era games, with the intention to be like an Arcade game itself.

And the whole instruction book thing sounds like nitpicking to me. Who would complain about an instruction book?

Overall, like Sean, I give this review a 2/5.

If the reviewer didn’t like Volgar for being what it was, fine. The reviewer wasn’t part of the target audience for this game. But the reviewer sounded like he/she didn’t understand what the game was, and was surprised that anyone would like these classic game mechanics at all to begin with.

Ilja Lyubimov

I am surprised you experienced lag. I do not own a strong PC, but i had no issues with responce time; actually, i enjoyed the controls immensely, even to the point of not getting mad when killed (which i usually do in this kinda games)

bla

There is a way to get to the 3rd level of the game without charging through all of it. Learn more guys…

guywithabrain

Sean is right. Your review is downright ridiculous. Volgarr the Viking encases the very difficult and unrelenting genre, where it slaughters you time and time again, but if you yourself played it a bit more, you’d also realize it’s not meant to be a game like “Dust” or something.

The controls were designed VERY specifically. Have you noticed that you can only jump so high, even with the double jump? It’s on purpose. Everything in the game is super meticulous. Please go back and play it again, and don’t rate this game what it doesn’t deserve.

You know what? Go play Demons Souls, and Dark Souls, and you’ll learn to appreciate games like this. It’s giving back to the creators of games like Mega Man, that are just ruthless, and MAKE you learn stuff, instead of holding your hand through a 3 hour tutorial, and guess what? Then you realize that the game is halfway over.

Xalorian

it’s actually one of the more precise game there is out there. You just have to learn the way the controls work. And they are quite intuitive, actually. Not being able to control jump distance during mid air is simple logic and quite effective in a game like that.

Anyone is entitled to their opinion concerning challenge and difficulty. Still, accusing it of having imprecise control is just ignorant.